‘Penny Arcade’ Turns Into Animated Feature at Paramount

The one-off comic strip The New Kid takes off. What, no love for The Lookouts?

For years now, Penny Arcade has been the web comic. There are other web comics, arguably better web comics, but Penny Arcade, created by Jerry 'Tycho' Holkins and Mike 'Gabe' Krahulik, may in fact be the very face of web comics, tapping into the popular culture with wit and scrutiny, and evolving over time into more than artistic expression, but also a cottage industry throwing its own conventions and charity benefits. Penny Arcade is what other web comics aspire to: not just good, but successful beyond the dreams of avarice. And now they've got another feather in their cap… an animated feature.

Paramount has picked up the rights to the Penny Arcade comic stripThe New Kid, a one-off comic about the difficulty one young boy has in switching schools… in space. (Click the link to read the original strip.) One of Penny Arcade's many strips premiering new story ideas (The Lookouts and Automata are popular favorites as well), the high concept will be adapted into an animated feature written by Gary Whitta. Whitta is best known for his screenplay to The Book of Eli, but he has also written for such videogames as Gears of War, Duke Nukem Forever and the underrated Prey. Since Penny Arcade is usually a comic book about videogames, that is certainly fitting. Hollywood Reporter had the story.

Crave Online will return with more news on The New Kid as soon as we're done beating him up.